


New Guy

by Cluegirl



Series: Tryskelion Penitentiary AU [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Inmate Avengers, M/M, Pre-Meet Cute, Prison AU, Prison guard Natasha, Steve Rogers is a tiny maniac, pre-serum steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-07-29 08:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7677097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New guys almost always meant trouble for Steve; either coming in fighting-scared and looking for the quickest way to prove they were too tough to take on, in which case they take one look at Steve and figure he was small enough to take on without much risk; or else coming in ready to make a deal with the best protection they could buy with their limited means, in which case any one of the gang leaders they approached was likely to sic him on Steve just for shits and giggles, and maybe a tiny bit of revenge if the new guy got lucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Winterstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/gifts).



> This was a prompt fill for a challenge from [Winterstar](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar) for: Stucky, Meeting in Prison AU. And because I had a relative who worked in Corrections, my brain wouldn't let me handwave it. So here's what I got. If you're curious what any of the guys are in for, ask in the comments, and I'll tell you how they each got on the Naughty List.

Steve was in the yard, adding a new polymerase chain to the chemical formula on Bruce's right arm, when the guards brought the New Guy into the Tryskelion Penitentiary. 

It was delicate, precise work, requiring a fine balance between Bruce's prickly insistence on accuracy, and Steve's artistic eye for balance and negative space, and the homemade tattoo gun vibrated like a mad hornet, fighting Steve's grip with every stroke, so he was just about as fully absorbed in the process as any inmate could afford to be without steel bars between him and the rest of their little world. All the same, he noted the sudden hush as the normal, morning outdoor rowdiness bled away, the jingle of guard's keyrings piercing through the absence of sound until the yard door slammed shut.

"Well this looks like it should be fun," Tony said from Bruce's other side as he rattled the dice and resumed their backgammon game. 

"Tell me," Steve murmured, turning Bruce's elbow a little more toward the light. New guys almost always meant trouble for Steve; either coming in fighting-scared and looking for the quickest way to prove they were too tough to take on, in which case they take one look at Steve and figure he was small enough to take on without much risk; or else coming in ready to make a deal with the best protection they could buy with their limited means, in which case any one of the gang leaders they approached was likely to sic him on Steve just for shits and giggles, and maybe a tiny bit of revenge if the new guy got lucky. 

"White, mid twenties; long hair says biker, but I don't see any tattoos. Missing left arm says vet, but there's no prosthesis." Tony moved his white buttons along the board with precise clicks. 

"Veteran," Bruce murmured through his clenched teeth as Steve carved lines of ink into his flesh. "That's the face of a man who doesn't remember what it's like to sleep easy."

"Truth," said Sam from Steve's other side, where he'd paused in the disassembly of several stolen ballpoints of varying colors. "That's a thousand yard stare full of ghosts right there."

"His name is James Buchanan Barnes," a woman said from the open window above them, and it was only pure, stubborn luck that kept Steve from skewing his line when he flinched at the sound of Correctional Lieutenant Romanoff's voice. "His file says Ex Army Special Forces, and he's in under RICO for a contract killing. You guys'll like him. He's a hoot."

"Tony!" Steve hissed at the worst lookout ever, but Tony was already turning to hop up onto the table and casually block her line of sight so Steve could break the illegal tattoo gun down to its component parts.

"Oho, so he's a Family Man, is he?" Tony purred at the redhead as if she had ever even remotely encouraged his flirting, "Mafia? No? IRA? Colombian? Am I getting warm?"

"You are cold as Siberian ice, you capitalist pig-dog," Romanoff answered him in a campy cartoon accent as Steve palmed the batteries into Bruce's jumpsuit pocket, and passed the transistors off to Sam while tucking the pens into his waistband.

"Russian mob!" Tony cried, as if that was a _good_ thing, and Steve finally looked up, taking in the panorama of the prison yard like a chessboard laid out for a champion match. He spotted the loyal clusters orbiting their big men, each holding down their preferred patch of dirt like it was a nation's sovereign borders, all alert, tense and waiting to see what the new guy would do. All except...

"He's Hydra," Steve said, watching Brock Rumlow set aside his sandbag weights and dust the talcum from his hands while staring at the new guy like a sniper with an untested scope.

"Ding ding!" Romanoff answered with a grin as Rhodey, Thor, and Clint wandered over from the makeshift handball court to join the small crowd. "Prize to the little Captain. That right there is Hydra's private cleanup department, known as the Winter Soldier."

"I have heard that name," Thor said as he stepped into his accustomed position at Steve's left flank. "My father always said the title was a ruse -- any successful kill attributed to a ghost who was no one man, but many."

Across the yard, Rumlow had gotten to his feet, Rollins, Ward, and Garrett falling in at his shoulders as he straightened his jumpsuit with unhurried tugs. All the while, he stared with open hostility at the new guy, who stared back like an impassive brick wall, braced and immovable in the sunshine. The fight to come gathered in the space between them like a thundercloud, and every inmate in the yard watched, transfixed as it built.

"Well, chalk that down to one more thing your dad was wrong about, Thor," Clint offered with a clap to the tall blond's shoulder as he hopped up on the table to peer over the crowd. "The Soldier's real, he's one guy, and if that's really him, then shit's about to get really interesting over there."

"I don't want interesting," Bruce sighed, knotting his jumpsuit's sleeves more securely around his waist as he climbed from the table. "I'm very fond of boring, actually."

"No, that makes no sense," Rhodey decided, watching the Hydra inmates gather like hungry dogs around their erstwhile leader. "If that's the Winter Soldier, what the hell's he doing out here in General Population, and not locked up tight in solitary where he can't make a mess? I thought you guys were supposed to _stop_ inmates from killing each other!"

"Word in the breakroom is, Barnes is only here while his lawyers are negotiating a deal for him rolling over on Pierce," Natasha said, a smile haunting the corners of her mouth as she leaned lazily out the window to watch the mayhem gather. "So he might be here a couple of years, or he might go into Witness Protection in a couple of weeks, but for the meantime, he's gonna be Captain Rogers here's new roommate."

The Avengers groaned aloud at the news, but it was Sam who declared, "Another one? Didn't you guys learn when he bit Sitwell's ear off?"

"He's still got the other one," Steve declared with the kind of grin that made even the biggest of the Big Men think twice about taking the Avengers' diminutive Captain on, even with a crowd to back them up. "And all his fingers, too." He hopped off the table then, flexing his hands wide, then bunching them up tight as anticipation bubbled up into his chest like the best kind of drug. Rumlow and his thugs were starting across the yard now, all aggression and no strategy, as if they actually believed the lone, one-armed man would cower in fear and beg them for mercy. 

But there was no expectation of mercy in the new guy's face -- Steve could read that much in his stillness, his weighted silence, and his steel-cold stare -- this wasn't a man who begged, or bargained, or bought trouble off with guile and flattery. This was a man who, like Steve, had learned never to stay down, never to show his throat, and never to play fair if the other guy was going to play dirty. There was only two ways that Steve rooming with this Barnes character could go -- they'd either get on great, or one of them'd be moving to Medical for the duration. And if Barnes was rolling over on Hydra's elusive Boss, then Steve figured it was worth his while to make a good impression.

"Shall we go introduce ourselves, fellas?" he asked his friends; not so much a request for backup, as it was a test of the waters, to see if anybody wanted to object to Steve's gut taking a side in the brewing conflict. But nobody complained, they just formed up like commandos around him -- the Avengers; Tryskelion Pen's sneakiest, strangest, most stubborn, and most unlikely gang arrayed behind the tiniest maniac in the place as he chose their next engagement.

"That's an excellent idea, Rogers," Romanoff beamed down at the group of them with unmistakable pride, "And while you jailbirds are busy, I'll go toss Steve's room to see if he's hiding another contraband tattoo setup in there. I'm thinking it should take me, Coulson and Hill at least half an hour. That be enough time, d'you think?"

"Yes ma'am," Steve answered, giving his knuckles a crack and starting off across the yard, "That'll be plenty."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers interfere with Hydra business. Steve is not even sorry.

True to her word, Romanoff had the yard detail out of interference range in less than a minute. Coulson, the last to leave, cut a knowing glance between the mustering throng of Hydra and its occasional hangers-on and the small knot of Avengers.

_Take care of this quick,_ , the older guard's expression clearly said as he locked eyes with Steve. _But be careful._ Steve answered the concern with his usual broad, cheeky grin, and then the yard door closed on Coulson's answering headshake, and from the catwalks down, it was nothing but orange jumpsuits in the Tryskelion yard. 

Rumlow and his posse had finished their show-of-strength approach by then, fanning out in loose formation behind their leader. They arced around the new guy, grinning and jostling like hyenas, though not one of them moved closer than six feet.

"Dogpile," Sam observed warily, wrapping his knuckles on Steve's left. "Dude gets stabbed in a mess like that, nobody'll be able to say who shanked him." 

"Aye," Thor observed, knuckling the handball like an offensive weapon. "They wait only for the order." Behind Thor, Clint grunted agreement as he unwound the leather slingshot he kept tied around his wrist.

"So how we doin' this, Cap?" Tony murmured, dropping his homemade taser out of his sleeve. Behind him, Rhodes stood at the ready, with Bruce a little farther back, counting breaths and clearly reminding himself not to do too much damage this time. Seven of them, against the solid twenty five Rumlow had behind him, and there were even odds that it could turn all-hands quick if too many fists and grudges started flying. 

"Hang back and wait for my signal," he said, starting off only to have Sam catch him up short by the arm.

"What signal?" he demanded.

"Same signal as always," Steve grinned, shaking loose and taking off at an easy jog.

"Swear to God that boy likes getting hit." he heard Sam grumbling behind him as he went, and Steve had to laugh. 

He didn't particularly like getting hit, but he wasn't afraid of it either -- it had happened enough in his life to give Steve a really good idea of just how much punishment his too-small body could take. It was usually a lot more than anybody expected, and once Steve had learned how to make sure he dished out as good as he got, his stubborn tolerance for pain became an even steeper advantage. Bullies, it turned out, tended to scare easy when their prey refused to cower, and Rumlow's Hydra toughs were no exception to that rule. Steve was pretty sure he could use that to spin this impending disaster his own way.

"Barnes?" he called out, his voice pitched in a note of long-lost-bestie-spotted-in-Grand-Central cheer. "Jeez, it is you, isn't it?" The New Guy half turned, eyes white-rimmed as his one good hand came up ready to grab. Steve ducked it and slung himself up along the man's broad, bunched shoulders in a carelessly friendly grapple.

"Play along," he murmured into the swing of Barnes' lank hair as the man staggered, trying to deal with Steve's weight and still keep up his guard against Rumlow's thugs. Then Steve let go and bounced back to fake a barrage of punches at Barnes' belly with a boisterous laugh, ignoring the itch of having all of Tryskelion's Hydra members together behind his unprotected back. "Where the heck have you been, man? I haven't seen you since-"

Rumlow's hand clamped like a steel vise onto Steve's shoulder, hauling him around in a quick spin and drag that ended with Steve's back against Rumlow's chest, his toes barely scraping the dirt, and Rumlow's arm one solid flex away from a chokehold beneath his chin. "What have I told you about sticking your big nose into Hydra business, Rogers?" Rumlow snarled, his breath a rank, heated gust against Steve's ear.

Steve hooked his hands over the bone of Rumlow's wrist and grinned, keeping his eyes locked with Barnes to be sure the man stayed good and clear. "Aw, Brock," he said, loud and insincere, "You know this ain't business at all; It's _personal_!" Then Steve turned his chin, ducked, wriggled, tugged and spun Rumlow down into the dirt, his arm forced up about two degrees from dislocation behind his back.

A second later, a handball clipped Garrett's ear and he spun backward into the crowd, while beside him, Ward yelped and folded over his crotch as if he'd been kicked, a palm sized chunk of mortar from the wall bouncing off his shoes as he went to his knees. Rollins, never the brightest bulb in the drawer, was still looking confused when Tony got his latest toy into range, and brought the last Hydra Captain down in a jittering faceplant that all but scattered the dog-pack. The sound of Thor and Bruce, roaring in a harmony of rage as they charged the line like juggernauts sent the stragglers running for cover, and that was that; game over, good guys victorious, and hardly any blood on the dirt at all.

_And that,_ Steve thought with pride from his seat on Rumlow's back, _is how you stop a riot before it starts._

Then the water cannon in the Southeast guard tower came online, and just ruined everybody's day.

***

"They _tripped_?" Fury growled, good eye twitching as if he thought Steve was being somewhat less than honest, and the force of his glare alone could bare the truth. "All four of those rock-jockeys just happened to fall and injure themselves while the yard detail was conveniently elsewhere?" Steve nodded into the pause, keeping his eyes wide and earnest.

"At the same time?" the Warden went on, voice rising. "In a bare dirt yard lot?" Steve gave another nod, and Fury's glare went a little desperate. He waved a hand at the other end of the clinic, where a nurse with a flashlight was checking Garrett's pupil response while another wrapped up Rumlow's injured arm in a sling, and a third cheerfully applied an ice pack to Ward's crotch. "What the hell's even out there for them to trip on, Rogers -- their good intentions?"

Steve gave half a shrug, and refolded the tissue that was currently staunching his bloody nose. "I didn't see, sir," he offered, as if anybody in the room was even gonna try to believe him. "One minute I'm catching up with my buddy Barnes here," He waved an arm at the cot next to his, where the man sat glaring boredly at his muddy shoes like he couldn't be bothered to remember his own name, let alone how his shirt got ripped all to hell, and was kind of annoyed anybody should expect it of him. 

"Then the next thing I know, there's water everywhere," Steve went on, never looking away from the rising mass of Fury's patent disbelief. "People were flopping around like cops on lake ice, and I plumb lost track of who was doing what in all that confusion. Sir."

Fury tipped his head back, as if to plead with heaven for patience before he rounded his finger of admonition on Barnes. "That true?" he demanded, then added "And don't you lie to me, because you live here, and I _will_ find out!"

But Barnes just returned a cool, uncaring stare and nodded in Steve's direction. "Pretty much true, yeah."

Fury's eye narrowed. "Then I guess if you two are such long lost friends, Rogers oughta be able to tell me where the hell you grew up, shouldn't he?"

"Brooklyn," Steve answered at once, recalling the precise tenor of the cursing he'd overheard as Barnes had dragged Blonsky off of Bruce earlier. "Vinegar Hill, about three streets over from mine." To his credit, Barnes's face didn't betray even a flicker of surprise at Steve's accuracy as he nodded in reply. The disgusted snarl Fury made as he threw his hands up in defeat told Steve he'd been dead on. 

"Moth Er Fuck," the Warden berated the heavens, "like I needed _two_ a' you Brooklyn assholes to deal with around here." Then turned his glare back to Steve, where they all knew it mostly belonged. "My hand to God, Rogers," he said, jabbing his finger like it had a bayonet on the end, "Your skinny ass had better be coming up for parole soon, because I will pay my goddamned pension to the Board just to see them turn you out of my prison and onto the street where you damn well belong!"

Steve grinned wide then, still a bit bloody in the teeth, but knowing he'd won. "Aw, Warden, you know you're gonna miss me when I'm gone."

"Not if I got a scope on my rifle, I won't," Fury snarled back, then he leaned close to scrape Steve from shiner to bloody knuckles with an appraising glare. "Has the nurse cleared you yet?" Steve nodded, and Fury hooked a thumb backward at the door where Romanoff waited like a patient sort of spider. "Then you and your BFF can quit dribbling mud all over my hospital ward and get your asses down to the showers. If you think you can clean yourselves up without starting another riot, that is."

Steve braced a hand over his muddy breast as he got to his feet, making his eyes as wide and guileless as they would go. "Warden, I hope you know I would _never_ -"

"Let's go, Punk," Barnes cut in, hooking Steve's elbow with his own, and using his greater body mass to tow Steve along in his wake. "I'm not getting thrown in Solitary on my first night because _you_ don't know when to damn well shut up."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to Peanut, I did not intend to write more of this AU... I was just cleaning it, and it went off!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruises and nicknames are revealed.

The red-haired guard was dangerous, Bucky knew that for sure; she was slight and small, but her confidence and balance as she led the way out of the hospital ward declared that she didn't particularly _need_ any of the weapons on her utility belt to subdue unruly inmates, but she would probably enjoy putting them to creative use anyway. Danger, from her spark-bright hair to the fit of her uniform pants, to the knowing sweep of her glance as she unlocked the hallway door and stepped aside to watch Bucky haul Rogers out. This woman could not only kill him if she wanted to, she could get him killed and not risk breaking a nail. Danger, pure and simple, the kind you don't take your eyes off for a minute.

Rogers though? Rogers was worse than dangerous; Rogers was a _Problem_.

The kid was an idiot, putting himself between Bucky and Rumlow like he'd done out in the yard. An idiot and a maniac. He was barely pocket-sized, raw-boned and whipcord thin, and he clearly knew what trained and capable killer Brock Rumlow was, but Rogers still had stood there like a fool and let the Hydra Captain take a free first shot at his unprotected back.

By all rights, Rogers should have been dead within seconds of Rumlow getting him into that Sleeper hold -- neck snapped like tinder, body rattling to the dirt like a hollow sack before the brain even realized it was all over. But the mouthy little shit had somehow eeled his way out of mortal peril and into a textbook perfect arm-lock on his attacker in two seconds flat. Then before Bucky had even decided who to hit first, the cocky little shit had ridden Rumlow to the ground and apparently shattered Hydra's welcoming party like a flock of birds.

Nobody did that -- not to Hydra's own. Not without immediately counting down the minutes he'd have left before another of Hydra's many jaws came to close around his throat, or someone like Bucky took sight on him from afar and doused his life with one well-placed bullet. Nobody, from Beat Cops to Street Punks to Senators thought they could get away with disrespecting Hydra like that, Pierce had made sure of that... But here was cocky little Rogers, laughing through a fat lip and bleeding nose, as if he could take on Hydra all day. 

Un. Real. 

"Aw, you know Fury wouldn't," he was sassing the red haired guard as he swung along the hallway in a rolling gait that seemed halfway between a limp and a strut. "The Warden's good at hiding it, but he likes me, I can tell."

The guard -- the same one Bucky remembered summoning the others out of the yard just before the fight had begun, -- shook her head and chuckled. "He really, really doesn't, Rogers," she said, and her smile was a pointed thing, though her eyes were fond, "That's Coulson you're thinking of. It's different."

"Well, Fury likes Coulson too, so it's all good," Rogers came back at once, scrubbing one large hand through his pale hair, knocking half-dried mud loose to rattle on the tiles as they went. "So did you have fun rifling my underwear drawer, Natasha?" he added, all teasing flirtation that made Bucky want to shake him a little. What the hell was wrong with Rogers? Didn't this idiot realize that she'd effectively left him to die? 

"More than words can tell," she answered with a smirk as she stopped at a big steel door marked 'shower facilities' and pulled the keys from her belt as if the thought of her prisoners outnumbered her never crossed her mind. "It's cute how you think I don't know where you keep the extra razor blades for your pencil sharpeners."

"Well, if I thought you were worried about them, I wouldn't keep them there," Rogers answered with a laugh as she unlocked the door and shoved it open. "But we both know I could do way more damage with the wire binding off my sketchbook than with an itty bitty little razor like that, any day."

"Which is why I confiscated said sketchbook."

Rogers whirled on her in the doorway, his expression somewhere between appalled and outraged and Bucky was halfway to grabbing the little shit again when the guard raised her hand with a smirk, palm out like a peace offering. "Kidding," she said, and cut a knowing glance at Bucky when he dropped his own hand. "This time. Next book you order though, make it a Moleskine, okay?"

A sane person would have held his peace at that, or maybe offered up a servile 'yes ma'am' to stay on the guard's good side. Rogers, however, gave the woman a clanging eyeroll, a middle finger, and a muttered comment about staples and papercuts as he stomped his way into the shower room. Bucky made to follow, but she caught him up on the threshold with a solid palm to his chest, and for him, her glare held no sweetness whatsoever.

"Shoes on the bench, clothes in the chute," she said, nodding toward the small metal flap in the tiled wall. "You'll get ten minutes of water, then someone will be in with clean clothes." She cut a meaning glance at Rogers, who was already stripping down his bedraggled orange jumpsuit, then gave Bucky the most loaded stare he could remember, and said, "If I hear a ruckus in here, I'm not coming in to save you, so be polite, Barnes, okay?"

To save _him_?

Working for Pierce had given Bucky years of practice at keeping his thoughts off his face. He'd learned to think of himself as a machine; emotionless, ambitionless, built for one function, and that function was to end lives, not care about anyone's feelings. But the guard still gave him a knowing smirk and a cat-smug wink as she shut the door and locked the Winter Soldier in.

Behind him, Bucky heard Rogers swear under his breath as the laundry chute clanged against itself. But when Bucky turned to look, half expecting to see the awareness of his vulnerability finally showing up on the man's face, he actually found Rogers glowering off into space as though unaware that Bucky was even there. Unaware, or unconcerned.

"I hate when she looks in my sketchbooks," the man muttered, bending to strip off his socks and shorts and shove them down the chute after his jumpsuit. He was every bit as thin and waifish out of his clothes as he'd seemed when they were swallowing his delicate bones up. His skin was cream and pink, blue and yellow traces of bruises past haunting the shadows of him as thin cords of muscle glided over his bones in the harsh overhead light. His feet and hands were huge, Bucky realized, and as Rogers turned toward him again, defiantly unashamed of his nakedness, Bucky confirmed to himself that there was a definite -- ah -- proportionality to the man's ratios, even if he was a Grower rather than a Shower. _Especially_ if he was a Grower, because Jesus Christ!

"And Romanoff knows it too, which is probably why she keeps doing it," Steve went on, and it was then that Bucky realized that Rogers was actually talking to _him_ , not the empty, echoing air, and that his eyes were wide and wise, merry, and very blue in the sly tilt of his face. "I thought maybe she'd quit if I embarrassed her -- did a series of her as a pinup girl, you know? Vintage calendar stuff, nothing gross or vulgar; I mean I'm not a creep. Tasteful stuff, but not exactly professional. Figured she'd get an eyefull and back off, but you know what she did?"

Bucky blinked, glanced back at the door, and considered the woman's cat glide, and the dangerous angles of her smile. "Confiscated them?" he ventured a guess, toeing off his sneakers and zipping down his own jumpsuit as Rogers waited, a pale blur through the dark hang of Bucky's hair.

" _Confiscated_ them," Rogers affirmed with a laugh, "And left a hundred dollar bill in place of every page she tore out. Which, don't get me wrong, it's nice to have my art recognized and all, but the point of the whole exercise was to get her to _quit_ ,tossing my cell every damned week." It was an invitation, that laugh; an open hand, and a welcome to share the joke, to laugh along, to belong.

He'd heard such laughs before.

He didn't laugh now. "What, just like that?" he challenged as he shoved his shorts and ripped jumpsuit into the hole in the wall and reached back to tug the undershirt over his head. "Your girlfriend locks us in here, and we're suddenly old friends?"

Rogers' eyes locked to his, without a flicker toward the ruin of scar that wandered left from his clavicle and ended in a twist of numb, fleshy gristle a few inches shy of where his elbow should have been. Rogers held his gaze like it was a dare, chin high, smile wry. "Don't worry so much Barnes," he said as on the wall behind him, half the showerheads sputtered to life. "She knows I'm not gonna hurt you."

"Hurt _me_?" Bucky couldn't help but sputter as Rogers turned to head into the water. "Are you serious? I'm like twice your size." 

Then Rogers turned a glance over his shoulder, looked straight at Bucky's crotch, and then scoffed a laugh. "Nice try, but no you aren't." Then he stepped into the spray and scrubbed mud from his hair with both hands while Bucky's paranoia, ego, and temper fought each other for control of what should happen next. The matter was still up for debate when Rogers sighed and turned to level a lightweight glare in Bucky's direction. "Relax," he said. "I'm not here to pillage your virtue, and you sure as hell aren't here to make a play for mine."

Bucky could feel the blood, heavy and hot in his cheeks, but Rogers didn't seem all that impressed by the icy glower Bucky had used to terrify Hydra's loyal scum, and its enemies into cowed silence for years. "You seem awfully sure of that," Bucky said, stalking into the heated steam as though he meant to do murder where the cleanup would be easy. "What makes you think you know me so well?"

And again, Rogers didn't look away; not when Bucky's murder-walk aimed him straight down Rogers' track, not when he shifted to end up in the shower-spray beside his. Those too blue eyes tracked Bucky's progress all the way, not with a challenge or dare, but with a calm sort of analysis that made something worried and cold turn over in the pit of Bucky's stomach. 

This wasn't what he was good at; being seen, being understood. Being _known_. He was a long range killer, used to striking unseen, but under Rogers' deepwater gaze, Bucky was starting to feel like his blind had been made, and there was nowhere left to hide.

"I don't know you," Rogers said after an eternity of a moment. "But I know you had Rumlow so scared that he mustered every favor he could pull for that welcoming committee this morning. And I know you yanked Blonsky and Vanko off of Bruce today when you could have just pulled a fade and hid in the crowd when the mud started flying." Rogers grimaced then, digging at his muddy right ear with a pinky finger as he chinned back up to his own shower spray. "And aside from all that, I know that Natasha thinks you're okay, or she wouldn't have told me to look after you. I trust her judgment more than most people's."

To look after him... Bucky was unprepared for the way those words crawled down his spine.

_"You're Hydra now, son,"_ the fatherly monster had once said to him as medics fitted him with a state of the art prosthetic he could never afford on his own. _"That means you're Family, and we always look after our own."_

_"It's point, shoot, and go home, kid,"_ the hard-jawed monster had laughed over photographs of some inconvenient lawyer and his family, _"Just like you did in the army. You don't even need me lookin after you -"_

_"It's a simple task, Sergeant Barnes,_ the pale, sweaty monster had smirked over the case of a rifle and scope, _A quick job; an example, and a recovery, and then we go home. But if you should require assistance, I will be here to look af..."_

_"Don't worry about your mortgage, Sergeant,"_ the pretty monster in the flowered dress had promised him with a smile, _"It's all taken care of. Hospital bills too. After all, we look after..."_

_"Your sister's doing fine, James, don't worry."_ the monster in dirty coveralls had told him on the steps of Becca's empty apartment. _"She couldn't be happier in her new location. We look a..."_

_"Focus on the job, James. Let us look after..."_

_"Just go along with the cops and keep quiet. We'll handle the judge and your bail, and there'll be someone inside to look after-"_

No. Bucky swallowed back the thickness in his throat and gave his head a fierce shake. No more looking after him. Not after all it had cost him already. 

"Hey!" Rogers yelped when Bucky grabbed his skinny shoulder and sent him skidding into the tile wall.

"Tell me what the game is," Bucky snarled, wrapping that skinny throat up in the one hand he had left to him and leaning close to pin Rogers in place. "You stage that throw down and rescue to get me into your debt? You think you can buy yourselves a killer for the cost of fat lip and a telling off? Who's she with, this Romanoff? Is she Bratva? Some kind of an insider's Oprichniki?" He gave Rogers a shake, trying to recall whether he'd glimpsed any trace of ink on the guard's slender fingers. Rogers himself had none, but that didn't always mean anything.

"Well you tell her, I'm done, you hear me?" Bucky said through his teeth. Water scalded sheets of rage down the side of his face as he glared into Rogers' wide blue eyes and tried not to let the fury drown there. "You tell her, and anybody else who thinks they can buy me with a threat or a favor that I won't be bought! I am _nobody's_ attack dog anymore," he gritted over the pounding of his heart in his throat, "Not now, and not ever again, you hear me?"

He felt Rogers' throat work a swallow against his grip, and the narrow little chin bobbed down one single time. "I hear you," Rogers wheezed, and the tensing of his jaw was enough to telegraph the sudden thrust of his right knee toward Bucky's crotch. 

Bucky twisted clear of it, caught the knee on his thigh, and didn't let the pathetic attack force him backward even a single inch. 

And that was how he wound up putting his balls precisely into Rogers' waiting hand, which clamped vise-tight around them before Bucky could so much as flinch back out of range. That stranglehold didn't let up until Bucky forced his own fingers to loosen on Rogers' throat, but even then it didn't let up by much.

"That's how it works for you, huh Barnes?" Rogers said, voice rough, but low and steady as the steam billowed around them and Bucky tried not to wheeze in pain. That blue stare was somehow open, angry, and armored up tight all at the same time. Disappointment, Bucky recognized at last, and fuck if that didn't make the whole mess worse. "That's what you're comfortable with: Hydra's currency of threats and favors and fucking you over when you got nothing left they can take from you?"

Bucky swallowed, mind spinning as Rogers nodded again, a defiant little smile blooming at one side of his mouth. "Yeah, I've heard about their 'Incentives Program', and I've heard of you too. Winter Soldier; Fist of Hydra; Ghost at a thousand yards." His left hand, spread wide and braced across the span of Bucky's collarbone, relaxed enough to let Rogers give him a gentle little pat as he bared his still-bloodied teeth and said, "Well, James Buchanan Barnes, that may be your world, but don't you dare try and make it mine."

Then Rogers shoved -- far more force gathered in his rigid, lower thumb than in the straight-arm at Bucky's chest, but between the two it was enough to send Bucky staggering backward. He kept his footing on the slick tiles, but only barely, and that imbalance delayed his immediate urge to hit Rogers back, and do it twice as hard until his brain could kick in and let him know that the racket he was hearing over the clattering water and his thudding heart was right outside the door. He stole a desperate glance as the keys chimed faintly in the hall, then hissed and ducked when Rogers tossed the bar of soap at his head.

"Get in the shower, jerk," the little asshole hissed, angry color still high in his cheeks, "You still got mud on your neck."

If it was a trap, Bucky couldn't see it, and that meant he stood no chance of seeing a way out of it either. So he kicked the soap toward a farther stall, and got himself under the spray just as the door clanged open and a chaos of men in orange rolled boistrously in.

"- elling you it's not a capacity problem, it's the battery's discharge rate," a dark haired man said to the two prisoners walking behind him as he walked backward into the shower room. "I just need to change it out for a palladium system, and-"

"Palladium's a class two explosive, and they won't even let you into the machine shop anymore, Tony," said the one on the left, setting his armload of towels down on the bench and then folding his glasses down on top of them

"Ionized vibranium then," replied the first man -- Tony, apparently -- still not looking in the direction of the showers as another man, black and tall with military carved into his every movement, carried his own share of towels in.

"Okay, so leaving aside how you think you're gonna get hold of the parts for the particle accelerator Tones, I'm wondering where the hell you think you're gonna be able to set it up in here." he said as he set his towels on the bench and sat to take off his shoes. "Cause I tell you this for nothing, you are not moving my bunk for it."

"There'd be space in the Rec Room," Tony insisted, stripping out of his jumpsuit without a care for the open hallway door, or the other men still coming in. "And Romanoff always did respect the spirit of invention, so she'd totally-"

"Romanoff is standing right here," came the quelling, feminine voice as three more men crowded into the shower room and began to strip. "And she doesn't want to hear anything more about the illegal tazer you definitely did not have today, but which you had better have gotten rid of before next cell check."

"What tazer?" Tony called, just as Rogers croaked out,

"He will."

One of the newcomers whipped about, sharp eyed at the sound of Rogers' voice, then whistled low through the gap in his teeth. "What the hell happened to your neck, Steve?" he asked, not bothering to strip before marching straight into Rogers' shower stall for a closer look at the livid hand print Bucky had left on the man's cream-pale skin.

"It's from earlier. With Rumlow, in the yard," Rogers lied, ducking away from the other's attempt to catch and lift his chin. "Leave it, Sam, I'm fine."

His protest fell into a suddenly quiet room as the other prisoners all turned to look, tracing the angry red marks, and remembering, as Bucky was, how it had been Rumlow's elbow, not his hand, against Rogers' throat in the yard. Bucky made himself keep moving, keep washing, deliberate and slow, his mind scrabbling to remember who had been the biggest threat in the brawl before; who he'd have to take down first in order to survive it when they decided to come at him.

Then a short blond guy with both eyes bruised and two of his fingers taped together gave a shrug that loudly cracked his neck, saying "Sure, Cap. Whatever you say." But it was Bucky he was staring in the eye as he spoke. "You gonna introduce us to your new roommate, or do we have to wait till next yard liberty to get to know each other?"

"Aw, can it, Hawkeye," Rogers sighed, shoving the other guy -- Sam, Bucky recalled, -- into the next shower down. Then he finished rinsing the soap from his armpits, and huffed an exasperated, but strangely conspiratorial look in Bucky's direction.

"Okay, so you kinda met Bruce out in the yard," he said, gesturing toward the man who had had the spectacles. He was half undressed now, revealing an inked tapestry of lacy molecules winding like chains up around both arms, and disappearing into the curly thatch of his chest hair. "But in the interest of making it official, Doctor Banner is our resident chemistry genius, and the nicest guy you’ll ever meet."

"Yeah, until he isn’t," said Tony, who was strangely familiar he hooked his bearded chin over the doctor's shoulder.

"Then, just look out," added the military man as he finished folding his unstained clothes and set them on the bench. 

Rogers snickered, and leaned conspiratorially in Bucky's direction. "Bruce cooks drugs when he isn’t inducing major brain trauma in creeps who totally deserved it, but who have lamentably good lawyers."

From two showers down, Sam began singing. "They had it comin’, they had it comin’"

"AND Bruce also distills a contraband applejack that’ll blow your mind," Rogers said over the tune, "So no matter how you look at it, Doctor Banner's good side’s the place you wanna stay."

"Pleasure, Mr. Barnes," the doctor said, offering his hand to shake before choosing a shower stall for himself. "Please don’t let these criminals influence your good opinion of me. I’m really quite harmless."

That sent the room into snickers, and Tony cackled outright as he flung his own clothes in the general direction of the laundry chute, missing by a good three feet. "Fluffy nugget, the man watched you try and push Vanko’s head through the mantle of the earth just this morning," he said. "I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed." He tried to ruffle the doctor's hair and for his effort, got a not-quite gentle shove that didn't seem to tamp down his giddy energy at all. "So hi there, New Guy," he said to Bucky, turning on the kind of smile you usually only saw on celebrity magazines. "I'm Tony-"

"Stark," Bucky realized all at once, annoyed that it had taken him so long to place that Hollywood smile and artfully manicured beard. "I've heard of you."

From down the line of showers, Sam scoffed "Yeah, you and everyone in North America who hasn't spent the last ten years in a coma."

"Excuse me, Wilson!" Stark yelped as though wounded, "Worldwide infamy here! I've got fans in Belarus, Laos, Hong Kong --"

"And a big following in Malibu County," Rogers put in, straight faced, but with a laughing eye.

"Didn’t you blow up half of Malibu County a few years ago?" Bucky ventured.

That was when the military man breezed by and rendered a loud slap to Tony Stark's naked behind. "No," he said over the yelp of outrage, "Tony blew up his crooked CEO, who was trying to kill him a few years ago. Malibu County was just collateral damage."

"Strictly speaking, Stane blew himself up. I was just defending myself and my company-"

"In a spectacularly showy and explosive sort of way that left the jury downright skeptical about your innocence," the other agreed with a gleaming grin.

"He only had himself to blame..." Sam sang as if he'd never paused, and the doctor joined him for the next line.

"If you'da been there, If you'da seen it!"

"You goddamn well would'a done the same if you'd had a fusion reactor and a shielded hardsuit on haaaaannnd!" Stark finished, mangling the song's scansion without any sign of remorse.

Rogers chuckled. "Yeah, so Tony isn't allowed in the machine shop anymore for reasons that should be fairly obvious. That handsome and patient fellow behind him is-"

"James Rhodes," the man introduced himself without offering a handshake. "Air Force Colonel, before I went and kept this idiot from getting blown up."

"Rhodey's in for 'Saving A Friend's Life While Black,'" Rogers whispered loudly. "It's a pretty common conviction around here, as my wingman Sam Wilson can tell you."

"Well, in Rhodey's case, there was also misappropriation of restricted ordnance, and aiding and abetting. While Black," Stark added, sauntering off to the shower stall between Rhodes' and the doctor's. 

Bucky cast a glance past Rogers, and was unsurprised to find Sam's dark, assessing eyes already on him. "And you?" he asked, equal parts challenge and distraction. "What are you in for?"

The man made a rude sound with his lips. "Me? Nothin'. I just kicked a cop off a skinny little white dude he was trying to choke out at a protest rally." Unsurprisingly the information came with a meaning glance in Rogers' direction. "While Black."

Rogers didn't miss the look though, and rose to it indignantly. "Hey, him and his partner were assaulting that girl, and you know it! Her shorts were halfway off, and they were about to break her arm! Was I supposed to just pretend I didn't see that shit?"

"Aaand that should tell you all you need to know about what got Rogers thrown in here," Sam said with a grin. "So who's next? Oh, the blond mountain with the scowl over there is Thor."

Bucky followed Sam's nod, and blinked. "Thor... Odinson?" he asked, eyeing the rune-and-hammer tattoos that looped like a breastplate across acres of the man's chest, and hoping to be wrong.

The guy with shiners and the taped fingers smirked and threw Stark's wad of clothes at the chute without a glance. Unlike Stark's throw however, his went straight down the hole with a clang. "I take it you’ve heard of him?" he said, voice loaded with sarcastic and knowing surprise.

Because nobody worked in the Families for long without hearing about the Odinsons. Brain and Brawn under a canny Guile that ruled more than one Northern European country's shadow trade with an iron grip and a silver tongue. "I might have," he allowed, brain scrambling to figure out how the hell an Odinson could have wound up in an American prison.

The Odinson in question didn't bother to smile at his introduction, and his electric blue eyes never wavered from Bucky's own as he stalked across the shower room like he was armored up and ready for combat instead of naked and sporting a muddy rat's nest in the back of his long, golden hair. "My brother tells me that you once tried to kill him in Stuttgart, Winter Soldier," Thor said, his voice an open threat. "Is this true?"

Relief skated down Bucky's spine in a sudden, shivering cascade, but he kept his gaze locked on the big man's as he shook his head. "Not if he survived to tell you about it."

"Oh, Loki’s alive all right," the guy with the twin shiners and taped fingers scoffed, bumping past Odinson's back as if he couldn't care less about the man's temper. "Asshole's alive and well and walking around free as a bird, since he got our Thor to take the rap for his casino fire, insider trading and fifteen million in embezzled investments."

"That is not how it-"

"Thor, don’t even," Rhodes cut the protest off. "Loki was the little shit that tried to sell your dad out to Interpol when he got caught money laundering a few years back, didn't he?"

"He was merely-"

Sam joined the game, grinning wide. "You told me he said his biological father was a big, blue dude."

"There is a documented condition that-"

"So we’ve established the basics," Shiners cut Thor off, shoving the man toward a shower of his own with an unexpectedly deft use of leverage. "Don’t believe anything Loki says, especially if he said it to Thor first. Also, that the Winter Soldier never took a shot at Loki, because we all know that Hydra doesn’t accept near misses when it sets a mark on someone. Moving on, I’m Clint Barton." He stuck out his hand, taped fingers and all, like an open dare. "Callsign Hawkeye," he said when Bucky took the dare and shook it. "CIA told me to kill or capture you at least three times before I quit the agency. Nice to finally see what you look like."

Bucky did not freeze. He let go of Barton's hand in a casual, unalarmed way, and his voice definitely did not shake when he asked, "CIA?"

Barton's smile was more than a little bit mean. "It was a phase. I got over it."

"Clint is in for grand theft auto, evading arrest, reckless endangerment, destruction of government property, game poaching, and arson," Rogers chose that moment to put in. "So if he ever asks you to go bass fishing with him, I’d advise you to say no."

"Hey, it’s not my fault -- shit just happens," Barton yelped when Rogers vacated his shower and pushed him into the empty slot.

"To you, Hawkeye," Rhodes called from down the row. "Shit just happens to you. And it happens an unreasonable amount of the time."

"Face it, Barton," Stark added, "You’re a human disaster with exceptional aim. But at least you’re _our_ human disaster with exceptional aim."

"So that's the whole crew," Rogers said as he swathed his lanky, bony frame in a thin, cheap towel that had no right to cover as much of him as it did. "Together, we get called the Avengers."

Bucky turned the name over in his brain, wondering for a moment before he gave up and asked, "And what do you avenge, exactly?"

"All the stupid shit Steve can't shut down before it happens in here, mostly," Sam grumbled, vacating his shower with his dripping clothes in one hand. "But sometimes we avenge the death of common sense when we get really bored."

"I avenged the hell out of the Internet router a few weeks back," Stark put in.

"And that's why Tony only gets Computer lab privileges under supervision now," Rogers replied scrubbing water from his hair with another towel. He looked up as Bucky left his shower stall, but didn't step aside or show a flicker of concern as Bucky reached past him to reach the towels. If anything, Rogers' blue eyes held something bizarrely akin to pride.

"Avengers," his voice, deep and commanding from such a wisp of a man, brought all eyes to him at once. Then Rogers gestured to Bucky like some kind of magician's assistant, and said, "This surly asshole here is a man of mystery and multiple unsubstantiated contract killings, who swears like a Brooklyn docksider, and if rumor is to be believed, is about to bring the biggest heads in Hydra to the chopping block with one well-placed deposition." Bucky swallowed hard, forcing the surge of nervous alarm down low in his belly as every eye in the room followed Rogers' hand to him. "And he's also gonna be sharing my cell for the foreseeable future."

"James Buchanan Barnes; the Avengers," Rogers said gracious as a debutante's formal introduction. "Avengers; James."

"Bucky."

"What?"

He licked his lips and said again, "Bucky. Short for Buchanan. It's my name." Rogers' face spread into a slow, knowing smile, but Bucky would be damned if he was gonna let that little pipsqueak go over all smug just because he happened to have an almost scary knack for profiling. "If you an' me really are supposed to be old friends like you told the Warden, then you should maybe call me by my actual name. Nobody calls me James except for court officials, Nuns, and people I kinda low-key hate."

Rogers' grin went full beam then, unreasonably sweet in a face that had been spitting blood not half an hour ago. "Well, I guess you'd better call me Steve then," he said, and stuck out his hand to shake.

"Or you can call him Cap, like the rest of us do," Barton called.

Rogers -- Steve's face flickered to annoyance at that. "Don't call me-"

"Cap?" Bucky asked, raking a skeptical glance over Steve's underweight frame. "Like in Captain?"

"Captain America!" Stark bellowed suddenly, fist upraised, "Champion of truth! Justice!"

"Comeuppance!" Sam chimed in, swatting at Steve as he leaned past to get a towel of his own.

"Guys, no," Rogers groaned.

"Of righteous indignation!" Thor boomed, and joined the fist-pump crowd.

"Stop."

"Inspiring Rhetoric!" the doctor cried, not quite able to keep a snicker out of his voice.

Barton did a better job, though his fist-pump left two fingers to be desired. "Of punching Evil in the Nads!"

"No!" Rogers cried, and good lord was he _blushing_? 

"Captain of Fighting the Good Fight!" Rhodes didn't bother trying not to laugh.

"And of fighting the Bad Fight!" Thor was grinning now.

"And of fighting Any Damn Fight!" Wilson cried, jostling an arm around Steve's shoulders.

"I hate you all so much right now!" Steve declared to the ceiling vents.

"Mostly he just likes punching things," Stark rolled on, grinning and shoulder-bumping past Steve and Wilson on his way to the towels. "But he's really good at it, so we let him call the shots. And since we all kinda feel like punching things sometimes, it turns out we wind up taking less damage when we follow his lead."

"That's right," Rhodes said, plucking the towel Stark threw at his head out of the air, "Fur starts flyin, I know I don't wanna be on any other side."

"And you call him your Captain?" Bucky let a note of challenge creep into his voice, recalling Rhodes' pre-conviction rank.

It was Barton who answered for all of them though. "And we call him our Captain."

"Well I call him Oh Captain My CaptaiOuch!" Stark danced away from the snap of Steve's rat-tailed towel across his flank. "Hey, no fair!"

Bucky blinked, took one second to consider the benefits of clinging to the ice-locked paranoia that had ruled the last three years of his life, against the open, easy, companionable chaos he was seeing before him now. It wasn't like anything that had ever happened in Hydra, nor even in the black ops unit Bucky had served in before losing his arm. These guys knew each other's secrets, knew where they were soft and sore, and where the rage and blood ran close to the skin, but there was no fear among them, not toward each other. Trust. The kind that no amount of leverage could force -- that was what he realized he was seeing here, in this prison shower, where all men couldn't help feeling at least a little vulnerable. Trust. It was alien to him; it was crazy, it was so, so risky, and yet to his utter surprise, he found that he wanted a piece of it almost as badly as he'd wanted his left arm back after his discharge. That wanting alone was terrifying, but Bucky straightened his spine to it, raised his chin to the room, and made himself offer up a small, but genuine smile.

"Well," he said as Steve turned those eyes on him again, and was that hope Bucky was seeing in them now? "I've kinda had my fill of ranks and titles lately, so I'll just stick with Steve, if it's all the same to you guys."

They cheered, because of course they did. But it was Steve Rogers' brilliant smile that drew Bucky in to take the man's offered hand with the one he had left to him, and give it a solid shake. It felt strangely as if something he couldn't remember losing had suddenly just slotted back into its rightful place, and Bucky found himself laughing as Steve leaned in and called over the noise, "That's right, Buck. Us Brooklyn boys, we gotta stick together."

"To the end of the line," Bucky found himself replying, and for some reason he'd probably never understand, he found he actually meant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And NOW it's done, cupcakes! 
> 
> I know I've only just gotten everyone introduced, but I really have no more story left to tell in this 'verse. If that changes, I'll be sure to make a bit announcement about it, but for now, if anybody has a notion and they want to pick up the ball and run with it, I'll happily hand it right over. Fandom is a cooperative effort, after all, and I love nothing more than when fans spin their own yarns off the skeins I've done.
> 
> Cheers!


End file.
